The Long Hunter
A Historical Novel
by
Don McNair
Smashwords Edition
Copyright© 2012 by Don McNair
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews. All trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, and registered service marks are the property of their respective owners and are used herein for identification purposes only.
Dedication
I dedicate this book to the loving memory of my father-in-law, Dr. William Moore Hadley. My friend, my mentor, my very own Noah Dandridge.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
CHAPTER 1
The bitter north wind strengthened this November day in 1770 as it squeezed southward between the Virginia Valley’s Allegheny and Blue Ridge mountains. It had started in Pennsylvania, in land peopled by real neighbors, clapboard houses and steepled churches, but now slipped its cold fingers through mostly untouched wilderness. It whined along the James River, and swirled around a stark log inn perched alone in a cluttered clearing.
Young Matt McLaren stared out an inn window and watched an old man approach from the south, squinting against the wind. The man tugged his jerkin tighter at the neck and leaned forward, stumbled and regained his footing. He reached the building and sighed, and elbowed the plank door open. Matt turned to the door.
The man looked away from the bright flickering fireplace at one end of the long room and stared instead at the rough-plank bar at the other end where several drinking men with glowing yellow faces watched him. The bartender eyed him as he leaned on the counter.
“Dandridge.” The bartender nodded and held the gaze. “Well, shut the damned door.”
“Struthers.” The old man stomped to dislodge dirt from his moccasins, and slammed the door tightly against the chill.
“I s’pose you want to sit. We’re pretty filled up.”
The bartender glanced about the murmuring crowd sitting at the room’s four long, split-log tables. His bulging eyes spotted Matt leaning against one cluttered table, a bucket dangling from a limp arm. Struthers slapped his rag against the bar.
“You! Get back to work! We got people what want to sit down.”
Matt straightened and sloshed his wash rag into the greasy water. He wrung it out, dark liquid oozing between his fingers, its odor stinging his nostrils. He gagged, turned away, and wiped more table scraps into the bucket. Sweat dropped onto his chin, more prominent now than when he’d arrived two weeks ago, before he’d lost the weight.
Struthers glared at Matt as he poured a shot of whiskey. Beaded sweat glistened on his bald head in the low light thrown from beef tallow candles, which dripped foul smelling waste down the chinked log walls.
Matt wiped the table with jerky motions, and the old man sat down. Sounds of clinking tankards and murmuring voices softened. Matt fought off vomiting, balanced his load of dirty trenchers in his thin hands, and glanced at the twisting path to the kitchen. He gathered his strength and sidestepped among the farmers and tradesmen dressed in animal skin caps, deerskin jerkins, moccasins and home pegged boots, sipping their nightly pints and whiskey. Two wore frayed frock coats left from earlier days in the north, or in Tidewater towns across the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Matt knew more stragglers would arrive before nightfall. The inn was an island of civilization on the lonely rutted Great Road that snaked through the Virginia Valley’s rolling, tree choked terrain. It laid just a stone’s throw south of the James River’s Cherry Bottom ford, where the forest opened to a wedge of brush and grass next to the river’s swift waters.
When Matt’s own family moved down from Pennsylvania two summers ago, they had no choice but to sleep upriver under a sailcloth tent. But those who could afford it were glad to pay six pennies for a bed upstairs with reasonably clean sheets, or four pennies if they’d sleep two or more to a bed. The single room was full every night he’d been there. The travelers pulled their cots close to the fireplace and buried their deerskin valises and traveling trunks under them for protection. Some paid another shilling to eat a warm meal with meat downstairs, then wash it down with beer or whiskey. He cleaned up after it all while they slept.
Matt reached the small lean-to kitchen and set the dirty trenchers and utensils beside the wash tub. The black slave woman, as thin as he but a head taller, dried her bony hands on her tattered grey gown and felt his forehead. He welcomed the coldness of her touch. She frowned. “You be sick,” she said. “You got no business doin’ this kinda work.”
He looked into her black face and shrugged.
“I means it.” She felt his forehead again. “You just a child, no bigger’n a tadpole. A bitty thing like you, and him working you to death. You ain’t fit to be out of bed.”
He stretched tall, arms back, trying to loosen his aching muscles. The dizziness came back. He steadied against the wall and blinked to refocus his eyes.
“You needs some air, boy.” The woman grabbed a huge wooden pail of scraps and thrust it at him. “Here. Slop them hogs, and stay out there a while. ‘Fore you keel right over.”
He grasped the bucket’s frayed rope handle with both hands and duck walked out the door and down the dirt path past the stable. Foul garbage sloshed onto his homespun trousers and bare feet with each step. He upended the bucket and watched the slop spill over the bottom fence rail into the pig trough.
Matt leaned against the fence and glanced around. He’d started before dawn, after Struthers shook him out of his feverish sleep, to feed the fire. The sun broke over the Blue Ridge Mountains as he set out breakfast things, melting the frost around the inn and its stable, where he slept. It was high overhead when he chopped the kindling just before the noon meal. Now, it was almost dark.
He glanced north into the cold wind, toward where he’d lived until two weeks before, then turned west. A big red sun was setting over the Allegheny Mountains. He fought back the wind’s chill and the memories, concentrated instead on the sun. He could actually see it sinking when he looked at where its round edge touched the treetops. Actually moving down, taking with it the light, then the color from around him. Just now, the tree colors were changing from blue and green and brown to purple, a deep purple that washed over the landscape as if a giant hand brushed it on.
An owl hooted to his left, a bobcat screeched. Matt stood still. What lay on the other side of the mountain besides the Indians? The Virginia province claimed all that land, clear to where an ocean might stop it. But King George forbade his subjects from settling there, on what the Shawnee Indians called the Can Tuc Kee land, although he did allow French and Indian war soldiers to claim homesteads there as pay. None had moved yet, as far as Matt knew.
But some men did go there to hunt. People called them the long hunters because they stayed a long time before returning with their hides and stories. His closest neighbor, Paul Tatum, had gone the year before. He’d harvested his crops, then set out with a hatchet, a hunting knife, and a shot pouch on his belt, and his long black rifle in the crook of his arm. He’d led two pack horses past the McLaren farm and waved to Matt. When he returned earlier this spring, his horses loaded with pelts, he told exciting tales. There were big buffalo herds, he said, and elk and other game, all easy targets on the salt lick trails.
Matt looked south, down the valley. A few had settled down there, in Cherokee country. They didn’t have to fight the mountains. They just walked down the valley, forded the rivers, and started a new life in the forbidden wilderness.
Heavy footsteps. Matt turned as somebody grabbed his arm.
Struthers!
“What the hell you doin’?” The man jerked him back to the inn. “You finish them damned tables.”
Struthers’ broad hand shoved Matt at the inn’s door. Matt stumbled, caught his balance and glanced back toward the disappearing sun. The purple was gone now. In its place were black and gray, and jagged edges. He went inside and got his wash bucket from the kitchen and returned to the dirty tables, then realized he’d left his cleaning rag behind.
“Use this one.” Struthers, now behind the bar, tossed a soggy rag at him.
Mat missed. It hit a plate and knocked pork scraps onto the table’s uneven surface.
Struthers shook his head. “You ain’t worth a bucket of warm spit.”
A bar customer laughed and Struthers grinned. The laughing young man wore a leather jacket and a tomahawk hung at his side. A white scar angled across his whiskered cheek.
“He ain’t worth nothin’ now, but I’ll learn him,” Struthers said. “Though prob’ly I should’a left him out there with the Indians, that’s what I should’a done.”
Matt’s stomach churned. He wiped another section of table top, next to where the farmer called Dandridge was sitting. The old man frowned at him.
“You don’t look too good,” he said. “You all right?”
Matt nodded. His eyes blurred when he glanced back at Struthers. Horrible pictures flashed in his mind’s eye. Images of the burned out cabin, of what happened at the Indian camp. Struthers told the story at least once a night.
The innkeeper leaned back, his fat belly pushed against the bar. His stubby fingers grasped its edge as if for support to launch the story once again. He licked his uneven teeth and grinned at the man who’d laughed. He gurgled fresh whiskey into his glass.
“On the house, sir.” He leaned back, beaming. “Like your looks. Want to hear a hell of a story?”
The young man nodded and sipped his whiskey. He set the glass aside and hunkered down on the bar, peering at Struthers over crossed forearms.
“Well, it’s hard to believe.” Struthers sighed and pulled another towel from under the bar. He slowly wiped the surface, worried a small spot into submission. “You’d think this here valley was gettin’ civilized. Hell, we been living here a while, at least up in the north part. But it ain’t civilized at all, no siree.”
He bent forward and squinted hard at Matt. The crowd quieted. Struthers’ gaze drifted from Matt to his bar customers. He let the silence build, as if he enjoyed the attention. Finally he spoke.
“Well, I was standin’ right here, and that there boy come runnin’ in,” he said. “He must be… what, fourteen, fifteen years old? But he was cryin’ like a baby. Said the Indians killed his daddy and run off with his mama and sister. Next morning some militia took him back up there and found the Indian camp up on the Jackson River, ‘fore it and the Cow Pasture form the James.”
His voice rose during the story’s telling, and the crowd quieted more. Matt gathered three trenchers and carried them down the table, dodging among staring patrons. His ears burned, his face was hot. Struthers now stood erect, palms planted solidly on the bare bar before him, boring his gaze into Matt’s soul.
“Them Indians was already gone,” Struthers said. “But they found the boy’s mama. She was layin’ there deader’n hell, stripped naked.”
Matt felt every eye in the room on him. That farmer watched, too. But he looked different now, like he had a question. The old man glanced at his rough, weathered hands, sighed, and set his whiskey down. He turned to Struthers.
“You have to talk about it in front of the boy?” He shot a critical glance at Matt.
The innkeeper eyed the farmer, his eyebrows raised. He flicked his rag at something on the bar.
“Hell, Dandridge, it’s a good story. And this here young man ain’t heard it yet.”
He wiped the now polished bar surface, shrugged and turned back to the stranger.
“His ma’s head was skinned completely bald. I hear they peeled her scalp off just like a rabbit hide. The militia laid her ‘tween two rocks and piled more on top to keep the animals out, they did, then chased after them damned Indians. And you know what? It looked like they might’ve been Cherokee, from the south, not Shawnees like you’d think. Could’a been up here on a raidin’ party, I s’pose. Then again, mebbe it was Shawnees.”
Struthers slowly poured more whiskey into the stranger’s glass. He frowned, then looked up and beamed. “Why, by God! Maybe they was Shawnees. ‘Member when that stranger shot that Shawnee kid a month back? Not five miles from here. The one that got too close to his camp? Why, that was a Shawnee, he showed me the scalp! I ‘spect they killed this boy’s mama and daddy to get even.”
The room was silent. Tears rolled down Matt’s cheeks. His own mother, naked and scalped, had laid there for all to see. He turned toward the wall to hide his shame. And his tears.
“I said that’ll be enough!”
It was Dandridge. He stood, staggered slightly and pushed his bench back, making scraping sounds on the puncheon floor. He was tall, even lanky, yet looked muscular across the chest. His long white speckled brown hair shook as he slammed his empty tankard down onto the table and turned toward Struthers. The two men stared at each other for several seconds. Dandridge’s body sagged.
“I think that’ll be enough,” he said, softer this time. He motioned to Matt. “Don’t you see the boy don’t feel good? Why torment him?”
Struthers stared at Dandridge. He threw his rag down and stomped around the bar, stopped in front of Dandridge with a tight-lipped glare. What had earlier seemed like fat now looked like solid muscle, tensed and ready to explode. His right hand hid something behind him, and Matt knew it was the pistol the man had played with two nights before while telling a customer how he’d shot someone trying to rob him last winter.
“This here’s my bar,” he said. “I can say what I want.”
“But you don’t have to be mean to the boy,” Dandridge said. “Common courtesy, that’s all I ask.”
The old man’s hand inched down to his mug and he wrapped gnarled fingers around its handle. He seemed unsteady. Matt realized he’d started drinking long before he came into the tavern.
“What rights you got to this boy, anyhow?” Dandridge said. “He ain’t yours.”
“You’re drunk again. Every time I see you you’re drunk.”
“Who the hell is he? He ain’t your boy.”
“I aim to get him bound out to me, if it’s any of your business,” Struthers said. “My indentured boy run away.”
Dandridge waved Matt over and Matt felt a chill. He paused and set his load down. Two trenchers crashed to the floor, slopping food on a man’s boots. He walked slowly to Dandridge and stood there, staring at his own bare feet.
“How about it, boy. You want to stay with Struthers?”
Dandridge’s whiskey breath hit Matt’s face in a long sigh. Matt glanced at the stiffened innkeeper, back to the floor.
“Well?” Dandridge stumbled sideways, caught himself.
“I guess.”
“What’s that? I couldn’t hear…”
“I said I guess. I don’t have no place else to go.”
Struthers relaxed. “There, you see? Now, you go on back to your drinkin’. Just sit there and get sloshed, like you usually do. And you, boy, clean that mess up off the floor!”
Matt started to turn. Dandridge touched his shoulder and Matt paused to peer into the old man’s face. He appeared to be about Granddad McLaren’s age when he died three years ago up in Pennsylvania. Wrinkles moved at the corners of his puffy red eyes. He cupped his rough fingers under Matt’s chin.
“Son, you look terrible. How long you been like this?”
Matt tried not to move. Dandridge shook his head, then dropped his hand and turned to Struthers.
“This boy’s sick,” he said. “I’m taking him with me.”
Struther’s mouth dropped open. “You’re… you’re what?”
“The boy’s coming with me. He ain’t goin’ to be your draft horse.”
Struthers stepped back. His face looked like somebody had rubbed flour on it. He fingered the pistol and waved it at Dandridge.
“You ain’t goin’ to talk to me like that,” he said. “A little work won’t hurt him none. Besides, I seen him first.”
The inn was quiet. Matt stared at the floor and wished he could disappear. When he looked up Dandridge’s soft face worked slowly, then stopped.
“What’s your name, son?”
“Matthew McLaren.”
“Well, Matthew – Matt – it’s up to you.”
Matt glanced at Struthers. He looked mad enough to pop a blood vessel. Then he looked at Dandridge. He knew what he wanted to do.
“I’ll go with you,” he said, quietly.
“Fine. Then let’s get out of here.”
The innkeeper stepped forward. “Now, just hold on. I don’t want to have to use this gun! ‘Sides, how’s a drunk like you goin’ to take care of that boy?”
Dandridge peered at the other man with sad eyes. “Look. I’m too old to worry about gettin’ shot. You do what you have to do. I suspect, though, that not everybody here’d want you to shoot us.”
Struthers’ face got blood red. He leaned toward Dandridge until their noses almost touched. “You’re a dead man,” he breathed, too softly for anybody but Dandridge and Matt to hear. “I’m goin’ to kill you for this.”
Dandridge’s hand guided Matt to the door. He stumbled, and Matt felt his weight as they stepped outside. The cold wind hit him, and he shivered as he tried to fight his chilling sickness. He walked rigidly, braced for a bullet.
He heard a click, then a pop behind him. The stars swirled, and he hit the ground.
CHAPTER 2
Pipe smoke, liquor, musty clothing. Warm flesh touched Matt’s arm, something cold pressed his chest. He flinched, groaned, peeped through swollen eyelids. Two forms loomed over him. The cold thing went away, the warm pressure moved to his forehead.
“He’s bad off.” A strange, deep voice. The pressure dabbed at his forehead, slid down his cheek. “It’s lung fever. He’s real bad off.”
“Been like that two days, Doc.” Another voice. Where’d he heard it before? “I’d thought he’d get better by now, but…”
“Barefoot, you say? And living in the stables?”
“That’s what he was doin’ when I found him. Struthers worked him ‘most to death, then put him out’n the stable at night like a horse.”
Struthers! Matt shivered, jerked away. His eyes squeezed shut.
“He’s tryin’ to come out of it, Doc. You think?”
The soft pressure rubbed along Matt’s arm. “It’s a wonder he’s not dead. He mumbled the name ‘Mandy.’ Know her?”
“Nope. Said it all last night, too. He’d say, ‘Mandy, I’m sorry.’ Over and over.”
“Well, we’ve got to build up his strength. Hand me that bag, Dandridge.”
Dandridge!
Matt’s eyelids popped open. Two hovering bodies came into focus. The farmer from the inn, his face lit by the flickering fireplace flames, stared into Matt’s face. He smelled of whiskey. The deep voiced stranger on the bench behind him rummaged through a small black satchel.
“Let’s see. Antimony, cinchona, jalap, paregoric… ah! Mercury.” He pulled out a little container, and opened it. “Triturated mercury. We’ll rub some into his arms and thighs, then give him twenty to forty grains by clyster, twice that by mouth. I’ll leave you some for tomorrow.”
Matt lay on his side and watched the doctor rub the medication on him. The man pulled a foot long pewter syringe from his bag and fingered a wooden plunger sticking out its end.
“We’ll need some water,” he said. He worked the plunger loose from the cylinder.
Dandridge swigged from a jug and set it on the table. He disappeared and returned with a noggin of water, and the fireplace again threw flickering light onto his face. No question. It was the man who’d stood up to Struthers at the inn.
The doctor tapped mercury into the cylinder, poured in some water, replaced the plunger and shook the mixture. “Well, let’s get his britches down.”
Matt felt the old man’s hands pushing into his armpits. He lifted, grunting. Matt moaned, tried to stand, went limp. The farmer grunted and dropped him face down across the doctor’s knees. Matt struggled—tried to, at least, but knew he hadn’t really moved much—then felt his trousers slide down his legs. A cold object slipped inside Matt’s rear end. The old man’s jug gurgled.
“You can see how I’m doing it, Dandridge. That’s all there is to it.”
“Bet that don’t feel good,” Dandridge said, softly.
“I expect not. But it may help him get well. There, now.”
The tube left Matt’s body. He struggled, again felt Dandridge’s strong hands under his arms. Dandridge laid him on the pallet and covered him up.
The doctor coughed. “Don’t you think we need a chamber pot about now?”
“Oh, my God!” Dandridge bounded out of Matt’s vision and returned with a pot. He placed it on the floor, picked Matt up and plunked him down on it like a sack of flour. Sweat sparkled on Dandridge’s face. He looked ready to leap – in what direction, Matt couldn’t tell. The old man stared around with wide eyes and grabbed the pallet blanket. He wiped his face with one corner, then wrapped it around Matt. Dandridge upended his jug and drained it empty. He scrunched his eyes closed, gritted his teeth and set the jug back on the table.
The doctor shook more mercury onto a small square of paper and folded it into an envelope. “I’ll leave the syringe here. Pick it up in a couple days.”
“Well… well, all right. If you think I can handle things.”
Matt felt the doctor’s gaze, saw him out of the corners of his eyes. The doctor took hold of Dandridge’s arm and walked him to the cabin door. His voice dropped, and Matt strained to hear his whispers.
“Struthers is fit to be tied,” the doctor said.
“I don’t doubt it.”
“You’ve made a real enemy. You probably saved the boy’s life, but Struthers takes it personally. Says you belittled him in front of his friends and customers.”
“Customers, maybe,” Dandridge said. “I doubt he’s got any friends in that group.” He fingered the clay pipe dangling from a leather thong around his neck.
“I’m sure you’re right. He’s killed two men I know of, and only one could be considered justified. Murdered the other one, but they couldn’t prove it.”
“I’ll watch myself.”
“Yes, well… take care. Think you can handle things?”
The room was quiet a few moments, then Dandridge spoke slowly. “If the boy can live through his folks’ murders and all, I suppose I can live through giving him a clyster. Didn’t look all that complicated to me.”
“Fine. Fine. I’ll look in on the boy in a couple days.” He opened the door and left.
Matt coned the blanket around himself, his head stuck out the top, and stared at Dandridge. The farmer looked away and busied himself cleaning the cabin. He dragged the bench back to the table, took a soiled trencher and the noggin of water outside. Presently he returned, wiping the wet plate with his sleeve. He set it on the table and picked up the whiskey jug and turned it up. Nothing came out.
“Be back in a little,” he said. He went outside again and soon Matt heard bumping on the cabin wall behind him. Probably a lean to storage room. More silence, then Dandridge returned. He guzzled from a full jug, corked it and set it on the table.
Matt was sitting in the same position as before. He’d tried to move once, but dizziness stopped him. It was impolite to stare, but he didn’t have the strength to look away from the farmer as he moved about the cabin. He picked up dirty clothes, wiped table crumbs to the floor with them, threw them into a corner with some others. Finally he stopped in front of Matt.
“Mornin’,” he said. “Feelin’ better?”
Matt nodded. Then he remembered. “Am I shot?”
“What?”
“Did… did Mr. Struthers shoot me?”
“Oh, at the inn? No, just shot in the air. Tryin’ to scare us.”
He peered into Matt’s face. “You’re pale as a ghost. You look terrible, for a fact.”
“You think Mr. Struthers’ll do something?”
“Now, don’t you worry about that man.” A callused hand touched Matt’s face. “You just get well.”
Dandridge glanced around and apparently saw nothing else that needed doing. He sat on the bench, hummed, finally looked back at Matt.
“Who’s Mandy? Don’t mean to pry, mind you. Just curious, that’s all.”
“She’s my little sister. The Indians took her.”
“Oh. Just wonderin’. Well, I’d best get on with the chores.”
He went outside. The sun flooded in through the open door and struck Matt in his blanket covering. He watched Dandridge stride out to a huge oak whose budding branches threw stark shadows onto the front yard. Dandridge pinched tobacco from a small pouch and stuffed it into his pipe and glanced back toward the cabin where the fire was. He shrugged, leaned against the tree and puffed the unlit pipe.
***
Cooling liquid poured over Matt. Something touched his forehead. Sunlight from the lone window crawled down the cabin wall two, three times, separating days from flickering darkness. Snapping logs, more cool liquid. The odor of tobacco, whiskey.
Play with me, Matt. Oh, Matt, look at my dolly sleep. Hold my dolly, Matt. Please?
Curly blond hair, blue eyes.
Can I go to the woods with you, Matt? I’ll be quiet, honest I will.
Coolness again. The cold metal tube. Light, dark, a horse’s whinny.
Matt awoke and wrapped the blanket tighter. He sat up. Dandridge stirred something in a fireplace kettle, beyond a high sun’s rectangular light patch on the dirt floor.
“I’m sure hungry,” Matt said.
Dandridge jumped. “God, you scared me. You awake?”
“This your place?” Matt tried to get to his knees, but fell back.
“Now, you take it easy. You been layin’ there four days, wouldn’t take more’n a cup of soup all that time. No wonder you’re weak.”
“I’m hungry now.”
“Well, I’d imagine.” Dandridge ladled some of the kettle’s mixture into a wooden bowl. “This here’ll be good for you. Got both bear and deer meat in it, don’t remember what all else.”
He handed the bowl and a wooden spoon to Matt. “Careful now, it’s hot. Sure you can handle it?”
Matt tasted it. “It’s awful good.” He ate quickly, turned the bowl up and drained the last liquid, then lay back.
“Want some more? Here, I’ll fill it up again. Got plenty, and you’re sure…”
The sounds and light went away.
***
Matt woke to the sound of chopping. The sun streamed through the window at a sharp angle. Mid morning. He must have slept almost around the clock. He pulled a leg under him and stood, fell against the wall, grabbed it for balance and waited for the room to stop spinning. He hobbled to the table, got a bowl and went to the kettle to dip up some food. He slumped onto the bench and ate his second meal since leaving Struthers’ inn.
Chopping continued outside. Matt wrapped the blanket around himself and stepped out into sunlight that warmed his face. It flashed off Dandridge’s swinging ax by a small clearing down the hill, past the oak tree, next to a harnessed roan horse. The man looked up the hill, lay the ax down, and came to the cabin.
“You up? Well, that’s good. You oughta be sittin’ down, weak as you got to be.”
“I’m all right. What you doin’?”
“Here, sit on the splittin’ stump. There, that’s good. Been wantin’ to clear more corn land this year. Thought I’d get started.”
Four fresh stumps poked up next to the patch of the old cleared land, where Dandridge had started a burn pile for the branches. He’d already dragged the smaller logs to the woodpile.
“That’s hard work,” Matt said. “I can help you.”
“Now, don’t be talkin’ like that. You got to get well.”
“I mean it. I like to work. Helped my daddy some, and Struthers…” The innkeeper’s face flashed in Matt’s mind, and he shuddered.
“Well, you got to get well ‘fore you do anything. Then if you really want to help… “ Dandridge looked south, down the hill, and Matt followed his gaze. It was pretty land. The Blue Ridge Mountains and the Alleghenies formed a valley his daddy said had the finest farmland God ever made. Some parts of it, up north where his family had come from, were up to seventy miles wide. Down here the ridges were closer, and the land rolled more. But the soil was just as good, maybe better.
“I cleared that little spot the first year Martha and me was here,” Dandridge said, pointing. “Right ‘fore she died. Still grow a little corn for my whiskey, and to trade for provisions.”
“We could put in more,” Matt said. “I can help you.”
“Well, that’s nice, but you don’t owe me nothin’. Stay as long as you want, though, glad for the company.”
They sat for several minutes, feeling the warm sun. Dandridge loaded his pipe and dry smoked it, looked out over his land. The silence sat heavy on Matt, and he searched for something to say.
“What would you grow, if you was to start farming again?” Matt asked.
“Hemp. That’s what I’d raise, if I ever got the ground ready. England buys it for navy rope. Why, I heard the county proved certificates for more than a hundred twenty thousand pounds of hemp last year. And it’s not even settled yet! A man could make a good livin’, growin’ hemp.”
“I could help you,” Matt said.
“Well, guess I’m just dreamin’. Takes money to farm right. Some, at least.”
He got up, went into the cabin, came out moments later puffing his pipe. He sat and blew a long sigh of blue smoke that curled in the still air.
“ ‘Course, we could plant corn this spring. The best time is when the dogwood is in bloom, or —” he looked up into the oak tree—”or when them there buds are the size of squirrel ears. Won’t be long now.”
He leaned forward, a smile on his wrinkled face. “By golly, we could sell that corn next fall and buy a well broken young horse. A good one, not like ol’ Benjie there. We’d have to get twenty, thirty pounds Sterling together to do it. If we could make thirty, thirty five bushels an acre and get a shilling a bushel… why, with my savings, it might be enough. We could clear more land this next summer and fall, and maybe the next year we could plant that hemp.”
“I bet we could,” Matt said. He stood and the world started to move. He fell back to the stump and touched his head.
Dandridge jumped up. “Son, you get back inside. Damned if I wasn’t thinking of doing what Struthers done! Get a poor helpless boy good and sick, then work the tar out of him. C’mon inside, now.”
“I’m all right, Mr. Dandridge. Just a little dizzy.”
“Noah, that’s my name. Call me Noah.”
“All right Mr.… Noah.”
“Inside, now. I’m ashamed, that’s what I am. What’s the difference between you clearin’ tables at an inn and clearing timber at a farm? The work here’d be even harder. You all right?”
Matt nodded and held onto the old man’s shoulder. They walked slowly into the cabin, and Matt lay on the pallet. He looked up at Noah.
“That’s a good idea you got,” he said. “Hemp’d be a good crop, looks like. I get my strength back and we’ll do it, sure enough.”
CHAPTER 3
Matt touched his fiery branch to the dead oak leaves, and crackling blue smoke curled toward his face. He tossed the torch into another leaf pile and shinnied up onto the fallen oak’s trunk.
He looked down the hill. The yellow river of dried grass, kept out until the previous spring by the trees’ sun blocking foliage, seemed to flow down the hill and disappear over the next rise, carrying vine bound trunks toward the evergreen blotched gray ridge that shimmered through heat rising from the fires. The clearing’s edges were straight and true for plowing.
A crisp breeze brushed Matt’s neck, raised bold goose bumps on his bare arms. He rubbed them idly, leaving pale streaks in dark caked dirt. A cold bite in the late afternoon November air hinted of snow to come. He’d already seen two vees of geese flying south that morning. He smiled. He was thankful for the brief break, yet working among the fires with his friend Noah raised a sweat that somehow felt good.
The work itself felt good. His daddy had often left their cabin with an ax on his shoulder and a smile on his suntanned face, returned later dirty and sweaty, but with his smile intact. “There’s nothing like opening up new land,” Matt heard him tell his mother once. “Nothing like it back in Scotland, or Ireland, or anywhere else. We’re doing something good here.”
Matt stiffened. Dark memories tumbled over themselves as the fires, crackling and snapping around him, awakened the horrible nightmare of his life. He grasped the rough bark beneath him for support and closed his eyes. He could almost see that day, that terrible day, when his daddy returned early from his own clearing work for the last time. Matt and Mandy were in the poplar grove south of the cabin when he heard a big gobbler in the bushes. He sent her home for his daddy’s gun so he could shoot it, and waited a long time for her to come back. The gobbler finally spotted him and scrambled off, and Matt stalked back to the cabin thinking mean thoughts about his sister.
He flinched and dug his fingernails deeper into the bark as his mind’s eye saw the smoke billow from the direction of the cabin. He’d run blindly through the thickets toward it, and stopped at the clearing edge. Fire shot up a hundred feet from the cabin’s dry logs, laid lovingly by his daddy and their neighbors. It twisted and flickered in the wind, formed a black plume that darkened the sky. He saw a fallen object in the cabin yard, and felt a thousand needle pricks as he stumbled toward it. It was his daddy, lying dead, face down. Moist, dark red blood covered his skull where his scalp once was. His mother and sister were gone.
“No! No!”
Startled by his own voice, Matt looked up. Noah’s ax was thunking echoes into the valley as he cut limbs to push back the forest walls. He stopped abruptly and glanced in Matt’s direction, then quickly returned to his work. Matt felt ashamed, then thankful that the old man said nothing. Usually Matt cried out only at night, when the dreams overtook him in his sleep in the cabin they shared.
Matt returned to work. There was a lot to do before they could plant hemp next spring. The fires would burn the limbs and part of the trunks, but they’d still have to borrow an ox team to pile the heavier charred logs and set them on fire again. Then they’d have to grub the stumps out. Or maybe they’d just plant around them.
“Hello, the house!”
Matt cocked his head toward the voice. It came from near the cabin, on a rise two hundred feet to the north. Charred logs lay between him and the voice, the near ones still smoldering, those farthest away cold markers of time. Beyond was the clearing Noah and his wife had made, long before Matt even came to the county. Brown, ear laden corn stalks leaned every which way, their brittle dead leaves clicking in the breeze. He and Noah would pick that corn when the burning was done, then shell it together before the fireplace.
A man on a horse came into view next to the cabin. He dismounted and tied the reins to a bush and stared at the doorway. It was a stranger, for sure. He was the only visitor they’d had since the doctor last came calling.
“Hello!” Matt yelled, waving at the figure. “Down here!”
The chopping stopped behind him. Noah shaded his eyes and shrugged. He studied the fires, pulled a burning branch away from the forest and into the grass still soaked from the morning rain. He shouldered his ax and limped toward Matt. A log had fallen on his right leg last week, but he’d never mentioned the injury. Sometimes, though, when Noah thought he was alone, Matt saw him flexing his badly bruised thigh.
The stranger, hands on his hips, turned slowly and squinted down at them. He approached through the corn, taking pains to plant his feet firmly between the rows where Matt and Noah had trod it smooth during their hoeing. He was a stern man, judging from the way he frowned. His clothes appeared stern, too: black, tight fitting trousers and vest pulled across his pot belly, buckleless dark shoes. He reached them and removed his black tri cornered hat and nodded to Noah. His nose was long and hooked, his bushy eyebrows knitted together. He glanced at Matt, then away quickly.
“Noah Dandridge?”
The man paused by Matt’s tree. He seemed not to notice that the shifting breeze swirled smoke in their direction.
“Am I speaking to Noah Dandridge?”
“That’s me,” Noah said, reaching a hand out. “And you are “
“Reverend Ashbrooke.”
The man grasped Noah’s hand with his fingertips, then rubbed them on his pants leg.
“Christopher Ashbrooke. I am this parish’s church warden.”
“I see. And to what do we owe the honor?”
Noah set the ax head on the ground and leaned on its handle. He wiped a sweat stained forearm across his brow.
“I take it this boy is Matthew McLaren,” Ashbrooke said. The visitor’s dull gray eyes studied him from top to bottom. It was hard to look into them, more comfortable to focus on Noah’s ax handle.
“That’s right,” Noah said. “Matt McLaren. May I ask what your interest is?”
“I’ll be brief, Mr. Dandridge. Samuel Struthers is concerned about this boy’s welfare.”
Matt shivered. Memories of Struthers flooded back. The stranger’s gaze bore into him, inspected his torn linen shirt, his too tight pants, the rough moccasins Noah made him.
“Concerned for him?” Noah lifted the ax, banged it down again. “Why, that lying fool. If you’d seen Matt at Struthers’ inn almost a year ago, you’d have had plenty of reason to be concerned about his welfare!”
Matt knew he was right. He’d been sick and weak, but since then he’d developed the muscles of a full grown man. He was a good three inches taller from growth spurred by the big appetite his work had given him and the abundant wild game he and Noah took from the forest.
“Struthers is concerned?” Noah repeated. “Pardon me, sir, I don’t follow what you’re saying. Struthers was killing the boy. That’s why I took him away from there!”
“Well, the boy was working for his keep, of course,” the man said. “Helping Mr. Struthers clean tables and such. Apparently, you’ve got him working here, too.”
“Well, yes…”
Ashbrooke raised a hand. “I must consider the boy’s future. Mr. Struthers wants Matthew bound out to him so he can raise him proper and train him in the inn-keeping business.” That’s ridiculous,” Noah said. “Hell, I can train him better to be a good farmer. That mean bastard… “ He swung the ax into the ground.
“Mr. Dandridge!” The church warden’s nervous feet jumped back from the ax. His face reddened. “There’s no need for profanity.”
“Matt’s learnin’ a lot here. He’s got good instincts. He’ll make a fine farmer.”
Matt blushed at Noah’s praise. Noah had never said that before. But there had been lots of encouragement. That’s the way… you’re getting the hang of it… you learn quick…
“You can’t just keep somebody like this,” Ashbrooke said. “This is new country, but we’re still civilized. The boy has to be bound out, legal and proper.”
“Struthers already has one boy bound out. How many does he need?”
“That other boy’s a runaway, Mr. Dandridge. He left last spring. They caught him and he ran away again a few days ago. Mr. Struthers has given up on him, and he’s making room for Matt here.”
“I’d have had Matt bound out myself, if I knowed I could,” Noah said. “I didn’t figure they’d let an old widower like me do it. But Struthers ain’t married, either. How come you let him do it?”
Matt felt light headed. He looked at Ashbrooke, who shifted his feet and frowned again.
“I had hoped I wouldn’t have to get into this. But your way of living is a big concern. Mr. Struthers told me you’re a drunk. Matthew, get your things. Come along, now.”
The stranger strode toward the cabin, but soon apparently sensed he was walking alone. He stopped and turned.
“Come along?” Matt called, still standing there. “Where to?”
“You’ll have meals and a warm bed with a good family until the court date in two weeks,” the stranger said. “After that I expect you’ll be living at the inn.”
“I ain’t no drunk,” Noah said. “I take an occasional drink, but who doesn’t?”
“I don’t,” Ashbrooke said.
“I’ve already got meals and a warm bed, Mister.” Matt looked at Noah. It appeared as if he had a hangover, but he didn’t. He hadn’t drunk since they began clearing the land.
“Hey, Mister! Can’t you see he’s hurt? His leg’s real bad, and he needs me. I got to help him here!”
“Son, you may have a few minutes to say good bye, and get your things. And then “
“I don’t want to go!”
Matt didn’t feel the tears until they were halfway down his cheeks. He couldn’t find the words to make the man go away. He peered into Noah’s moist eyes for help.
Noah looked just like he did when Sam Struthers threatened them with his pistol. He looked defeated, dejected—but in the next breath he’d almost dared the innkeeper to shoot. And they walked out free.
“You’ll have to go, Matt,” Noah said. “Go wash up.”
“But…”
“Get goin’ now.” Noah pushed him gently toward the cabin.
Matt hesitated. Then he shuffled up the hill, between two corn rows. He barely felt the scratchy leaves brush his arms. What he did feel was the hurt from Noah’s rejection. Saying those nice things about him, then telling him to get goin’. He’d stood up to a tough talking Struthers, but now gave in to a smooth talking stranger. Matt walked faster. Well, if Noah was giving up on him without raising a finger, maybe it was time to clear out.
He stormed into the small cabin and slammed the plank door. It bounced open again on its leather hinges, letting daylight into the dark room. He dipped a rag into the water bucket and washed the grime from his face and arms in long, quick strokes. The man didn’t even care! They’d worked side by side all these months, hunted together, eaten together—and now—well, Noah might just as well have said the hell with you!
Matt scanned the room. What did he have to take? Damned little. A pair of Noah’s hand me down trousers, a little bird he’d whittled with the pocket knife the old man had given him. He picked up the bird and rolled it in his fingers. It didn’t look too bad, really. They’d whittled together for a whole week, the old man sharing little tricks. He’d taught Matt how to sharpen the knife at the grinding wheel, then they sharpened the scythe, the ax, and the foot adze they’d use later to square up timbers for the barn they were planning. Matt hadn’t realized it at the time, but Noah taught him important things farmers needed to know, just like he’d told the Reverend. And Matt could have learned plenty more from the old man, even enjoyed the learning.
But not now. Not if he was going to wait tables and scrub floors! Tears blurred his vision, and he couldn’t blink them back. Thoughts of Struthers hounding his days and nights were more than he could bear.
A crash sounded outside, from the rear of the cabin.
Then another.
Matt dropped the wooden bird and rushed outside. A grunt, another smashing noise. He rounded the corner. Something flashed in the lean to. Ashbrooke, clinging wild eyed to a post, didn’t see him approach. The man recoiled as wet blotches landed on his pants and knee stockings.
Noah swung his ax, again and again. Jug after jug shattered and sprayed liquor everywhere. An inch of whiskey soon soaked the dirt floor. Thick streams flowed from the main puddle, sloshing debris in their paths. Noah was drenched with the liquid, surrounded by piles of broken crockery. Stunned, Matt and Ashbrooke watched the old man destroy his precious corn whiskey supply.
Noah didn’t stop until he’d broken his last jug. He panted, leaned on his ax handle.
“Suppose I could of just dumped it out,” he heaved, “and saved the jugs… but I got mad… and I couldn’t take it out… on a man of the cloth.”
His gaze landed on the still itself. With a mighty lunge he buried the ax head deep into its side, splitting the seam. He glanced around once more, tossed the ax into the corner, and faced Ashbrooke.
“I s’pose I should get back to the burnin’,” he said. “We’re gettin’ some wind, and that grass’ll dry out quick.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Ashbrooke said. He’d not moved from his spot, but stood there staring at the old man.
“ ‘Course, if those fires was to flare up, I don’t think I could handle it by myself. If they was to spread to the trees, well… I really could use some help.”
He looked at Ashbrooke, then at Matt.
“Matt here knows what to do. He’d be a big help.”
Another pause. Matt studied Noah, then Ashbrooke, who still stood like a statue.
“I suppose he would be,” the church warden finally said. He shuddered, as if shaking himself out of a daze. He looked at Matt, then at Noah.
“If I let him stay, can you have him at Fincastle court two weeks from Monday?”
“I guarantee it.”
“I should take him with me, but… I’m counting on you to be there.” He adjusted his coat and smoothed its wrinkled front, as if he had personally done the chopping.
“Well, I’d better go. I can count on you? Two o’clock Monday afternoon?”
“I guarantee it.” Noah got his ax and limped from the lean to and led the way around the cabin to Ashbrooke’s horse. Ashbrooke mounted it. He regarded Matt and Noah a moment, then wheeled around and spurred the animal into a trot. For several seconds the only sounds were from the disappearing horse and the flapping corn leaves.
“Guess we’d better tend to the fires,” Noah finally said. “You coming?”
He shifted his ax to his other hand and limped down the hill. Matt caught up with him. There was enough daylight left to finish the fire tending. Matt knew all along Noah exaggerated the danger of fire. But he liked him all the more for it.
If he wasn’t too tired come night, he might whittle another bird. A bigger one this time, with its wings spread. Maybe he’d have a really pretty one done by the time they went to Fincastle.
No. There were more important things to do before that.
He looked to Noah. “I’ll help you clean up the jugs,” he said. “If you want me to.”
CHAPTER 4
Just enough rain fell during the next two weeks to let Noah and Matt complete their burn safely. Each morning they awoke before dawn and were working among the felled trees as light and color came into the eastern sky. They returned to the cabin at dark, stirred the fireplace ashes, and added logs to keep the colder night temperatures outside.
The first week they ate their boiled potatoes and jerked venison, then sat before the fire and repaired clothing and tools. That done, Matt went back to whittling, and Noah worked with a large piece of dressed deerskin. He cut out long shapes and threaded leather thongs through their edges with his awl. They worked steadily, talking about unimportant things. Sometimes Noah told about living in Northern Ireland. Occasionally he gave Matt whittling tips.
“That’ll split if you cut down the grain that way,” he said once. Matt studied the piece, saw the grain swirl around an unseen knot. He turned the block and cut from a different angle. He worked slowly, deliberately. It was like Noah said. A good job was more important than a quick one.
***
Neither mentioned the upcoming court date, but it haunted Matt just the same. Three days after Ashbrooke’s visit, he made a calendar stick. Each evening he fetched the stick from its hiding place behind the cabin, cut another notch, and ran his finger along the stick to count the notches. Ten, eleven, twelve – when he counted thirteen he stared into the bright moonlit sky toward the southeast, where Fincastle lay. He heard a snap and realized he’d broken the stick.
Matt flung the pieces into the dark woods and went inside. Noah looked up from his usual place on the bench, where he was whittling on a fresh piece of wood. Lying next to him was a new pair of leather breeches. Matt sat next to them and stared into the fire. Neither spoke for several minutes.
“Well, better get to bed,” Noah said. “We’re leavin’ well before dawn.”
Matt nodded. He looked down, saw the breeches again, but said nothing.
Noah cleared his throat. He, too, looked at the breeches, then off toward the wall. “It’s getting cold. Put those on in the mornin’.”
“Yessir.”
Noah stood. He went to the corner and picked a tow sack off the floor. “Better get your things together tonight,” he said, tossing it to Matt. “Here, put them into this.”
Matt caught it. He stood and quickly looked away so Noah couldn’t see his tears. He walked around the little room, gathering his belongings. When he looked back, Noah was lying on his own pallet, facing the wall. Matt lay down, too, and slipped into a troubled sleep.
***
Matt felt pressure on his shoulder. He opened his eyes. Darkness filled the room, except for lines of moonlight cast through cracks in the lone window’s shutters. The lines ran across his blanket’s rough contours and fluttered on Noah’s moving body. Matt rose and dressed quickly in the chilly room. The new breeches were cold and stiff against his legs.
Noah laid green wood onto the fire’s glowing embers, then banked it under ash. It would smolder for many hours and be alive when Noah returned. The old man got jerky from a covered box and handed Matt a piece. He put more into a sack and stuffed it into his jerkin. They stepped outside into the November blackness, where Noah’s saddled horse snorted fog into the frost bit air.
“You ride first,” Noah said.
Matt mounted, and the old man took the reins. He led the horse around the cabin, and headed down the trace that wound eastward through the forest. The moon blinked through trees as they traveled past bright pairs of eyes that reflected its light, past the small, still lake where they’d often caught bluegills and bass to add variety to their diets. Matt saw its mirrored surface through the brush, could almost hear the now hibernating frogs and crickets, whose chorus had kept them company many a summer evening.
They came out on the Great Road and turned right, south toward Fincastle, some eighteen miles away. Matt glanced behind him. Two miles up that way, at the James River’s Cherry Bottom ford, was Struthers’ Inn.
After another hour, they exchanged places. Matt walked faster than usual, trying to match the horse’s pace. The three rut road, formed by wagon wheels and hooves of oxen and horses, stretched endlessly toward Fincastle and beyond.
He’d never been farther south than this point. But Paul Tatum, who had traveled this way on his long hunts, said the Great Road forked into three directions after Fincastle. Tatum took the west fork through a mountain pass into the land they called Can tuc kee. The east branch eventually wound east into the North Carolina province, and the center one followed the Virginia Valley south into Cherokee country, where few white men had gone.
The Cherokee were down there. Was Mandy there with them? Or was she with the Shawnee, over to the northwest beyond the mountains? He didn’t know. But either place, his heart cried out for her. Someday – someday he’d find her, and he’d take care of her the rest of her life. Matt heard the horse snort ahead, and ran to catch up.
CHAPTER 5
Matt stood in the stable doorway and stared across the road, at the log courthouse. It looked new, like it had been built that very morning. It measured maybe twenty by twenty four feet, not counting a lean to at each end. Flanking it were a lumber store, a saddler’s shop, a blacksmith shop, and a tailor shop. Some of the houses lined up beyond the stores, also made of logs, were as small as twelve feet by twelve feet.
The jail, which shared the courthouse commons, was the largest building Matt could see. It looked about forty feet long and sixteen feet wide, including the jailer’s quarters. On the way in they’d passed a public ducking stool in the mill, and now he saw a set of stocks in front of the jail. They sure knew how to punish a person around here.
A boy younger than he herded a dozen grazing cattle on the commons. Matt watched him, then looked up and down the busy street. Several backwoodsmen leaned against trees and building fronts, talking and laughing. Three young men raced by on galloping horses, whipping their mounts, yelling.
There wasn’t even a town here five years ago. Matt’s daddy said Fincastle, like Martinsburg up north near the Potomac, was settled mainly to help defend the settlers against the Indians. They reasoned the closeness of civilized activity would warn the savages to leave the white people alone. That theory must work in general, because there was now little Indian activity.
But it hadn’t worked for his own family.
Noah finished with the stable keeper and they crossed to the oak planked courthouse door. Noah put a rough hand on the latch.
“Well, here goes nothing. You ready?”
Matt nodded and Noah opened the door. Large double doors loomed across the small entry foyer, and single doors stood in each side wall. The foyer was empty except for a polished wood desk, where a young man busily scribbled with a scratching quill pen. Noah walked up to him, his steps echoing loudly.
“We’re here for the… the McLaren case,” he whispered. “Matt… Matthew McLaren. This is him right here.”
The man glanced at Matt, thumbed through papers before him.
“It’ll be at least an hour, but go on in. Judge Berkley dislikes tardiness.”
He scratched some more with his quill. Noah stood waiting, hands folded together. The clerk looked up.
“Beggin’ your pardon, but where do we go?”
“In there.” The young man waved his quill toward the double doors behind him
“Thank you, sir.”
Noah and Matt walked to the doors and quietly opened them. A scattering of people sat in spindle backed chairs facing the room’s long south wall. A yellow sunlight blotch glowed on the oak puncheon floor, divided by the shadow of a polished rail that separated spectators from an elevated bench. An old man sat at the bench, his wadded leather face peering from under a white wig. He turned toward a tall man in a bright green suit, who was talking in official words, then glanced at the white haired Negro standing before him. Several other men, in white wigs and patterned coats and vests, whispered at two big tables near the bench. Matt’s heart quickened. Christopher Ashbrooke, in his black clothing, was with them.
Matt and Noah tiptoed to empty chairs. As Matt started to sit, he glanced across the aisle and froze. His knuckles whitened on the chair back. Noah turned to see what had caught his attention.